I’ve always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.
Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.
We are still struggling with people who don’t feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change.
I know when I sit with my band members and we’re playing back a song that we’ve done, I know that they’re experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they’re alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.
It’s always a risky business inviting somebody on stage. You never know what they’re going to do. I try to avoid letting people join me onstage because it can be very distracting, and overly theatrical.
The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.
It’s very important that the music has a sense of adventure to it, and that it’s done by the seat of your pants. There’s a kind of nervy element about it.
I have things that I’m interested in, and I’m not really interested in writing about anything that I’m not interested in. But it’s important to me to be able to see it from a different perspective, and add something new to the whole picture.
